Cling to the Past
by ty.soglasna
Summary: Harry and Seamus are two of a kind; it just takes them a while to understand exactly what this means. Light drug use, mature content. A personal favorite! Have you loved a rare pair today?


**Important note: **When I uploaded this to the site, all my italics were tragically eaten (the bolds too, but they were easier to put back). If you're the type of person who, like me, places great importance in the subtleties conveyed by strategic italicization, then I urge you to go read at my LJ, where the formatting remains in its original pristine condition. **LINKAGE** http : // la-dissonance . livejournal . com / 67426 . html (remove spaces)

**Other notes: **This is dedicated to my friend Joey, for his birthday. All drabbles are exactly 100 words long, except for the final one, which is 200 words on account of smut. This is my first time writing this pairing and I really love this story really hard, so feedback is extra hot strong love with a cherry on top. :D

**Disclaimer:** I know I don't own these characters. Do you? Good then.

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**1. Mates**

"Reckon you might be the only one who knows what it feels like," Seamus says as he slouches next to Harry on the couch.

Harry follows Seamus's gaze to where Ron is patting Hermione's rounded belly, a dopey smile on his face. "Yep. Best mate for years, closer than anybody, 'till suddenly he goes off somewhere you can never follow him."

"Wouldn't want to follow him," Seamus says, but his tone is a bit wistful.

Harry shrugs; he doesn't know about this. "Has Dean proposed to Cho yet?"

"Finally, yeah," Seamus rolls his eyes. "Party's Saturday, you're invited of course."

**2. Beginnings**

Harry feels at a loose end, as he always does at these things without Ron at his side. He wanders aimlessly through knots of partygoers until he runs into Seamus near the bar.

"All right there, mate?" Seamus grabs Harry's shirt to steady him, and somehow it makes sense to lean forward and give him a resounding kiss on the mouth.

But then Seamus freezes and Harry sobers up a bit. This is wrong; Seamus has just lost Dean to a girl with a diamond ring, and Harry never, never wanted to take advantage.

"Sorry," Harry gasps, and lurches away.

**3. Backpedaling**

It's not until next week that Harry gets a second chance at that apology.

"Listen, that time at Dean's party, I was right pissed – didn't mean anything by it."

Seamus waves his hand. "Forget about it."

"I – all right," Harry says. "You're right, people do the craziest things when they're drunk."

They laugh together, and they're back to normal. Except he doesn't know what normal is for them; there had never even been a them until Ron and Dean got obsessed with their respective women. Harry's not used to thinking about things that had come so naturally before.

**4. Moving**

"Harry, I –" Seamus pauses to find the words. "I was thinking, now that Dean's living with Cho, I'll be down a roommate in our old flat – you've been living alone since Ron got married – so if you're looking to move..."

"I'm fine at Grimmauld Place," Harry says automatically.

Seamus's raised eyebrows say Alone? There? Really?, but he just continues, "And it'd be basically impossible to afford that flat without someone to split rent with."

"Oh. All right then, yeah, sounds like an excellent idea. Convenient," says Harry, ignoring the heat that coils low in his belly.

**5. Breakfast**

"We're out of milk again," Seamus reports as Harry ambles into the kitchen.

"Mmph," Harry says, reaching for toast instead.

Living with Seamus isn't the same as living with Ron, but Harry's mostly stopped trying to make comparisons. Of course, sooner or later something always happens that reminds him of Ron, makes a sharp pang of missing clench his chest, but he lives with it – it's not like Ron's gone, just different. He isn't looking for a replacement; neither is Seamus.

Living with Seamus isn't the same, but having someone all to yourself like this is nice. It's comfortable.

**6. Grass**

"The stars are fucking weird tonight," Harry expounds as he exhales.

"Yeah, they're like... ineffable. Pass that here, Harry, you've had it for a million years."

Harry passes the joint, a vice of Seamus's he's all too happy to share.

"You ever used to want Dean?" he asks suddenly. "Like really want him, like you might explode with the not-having-him?"

Seamus surrenders the joint after only one drag, expression distant. "...But you know it's not real wanting, right, it's just because he's there and he's yours, only not really. Never've let him know I did, though."

"Obviously not," Harry says.

**7. Sunday**

A crash resounds through the thin wall as Seamus falls out of his bed. There's a string of curses in thick brogue and more scuffling; he must be fighting his way out of his sheets by now. Not bothering to don boxers, Harry shoots out of bed, wrenches open his door, and sprints to the bathroom. He arrives seconds before Seamus and gleefully locks himself inside, hangover finally catching up with him.

Seamus hammers on the other side of the door for several minutes. "Leave some hot water for me!" he bellows at last.

Grinning, Harry opens the tap wider.

**8. Grass again**

The stars are uninteresting tonight: what's more interesting is how Seamus has recently developed a magnetic field. Harry gives him the joint and finds that his fingers don't want to leave Seamus's. He trails them down Seamus's arm, splays them over his chest.

"What're you doing, mate?"

"You're magnetic," Harry explains.

"Or maybe you just like touching me."

Harry rolls on top of Seamus to test this, rubs against him because they both agree that feels good, tilts his head and breathes the smoke from his mouth. They finish sticky and vaguely satisfied, vaguely wanting. The main question goes unresolved.

**9. Pub**

Friday night, Hermione's baby shower, and all the men have been exiled to the Leaky Cauldron.

"Is it true that you two are an item? There are rumors." Zacharias regards Harry and Seamus blandly.

Ron colors, opens his mouth in Harry's defense, but lets it go. He's learned to withstand Smith because he's good to Ginny: he hasn't postponed their wedding five times, nor turned gay on the sixth.

Everyone looks at them expectantly.

Seamus and Harry look at each other and dissolve into laughter. "Us? An item?" Harry manages, and then they can't speak for laughing. The very idea...

**10. Clutter**

They argue all the time now: over the dishes, who didn't put beer on the grocery list, the puddle of water that's accrued under an open window overnight, whether Seamus needs a haircut.

"Maybe there's something to what they're saying," Harry offers.

Seamus glares.

"Who knows, if we started shagging all this... tension, it might just go away."

"Bollocks," Seamus says. "The problem is you not asking before you borrow all my clean shirts. And no-one's saying that."

"It was just a suggestion."

"Go shag some bloke in a club if you're horny," Seamus growls. "Leave me out of it."

**11. Birth**

Seamus bakes Hermione a casserole the day she has Rose; he says it's what his mum always did.

Baking makes Seamus happy. Harry thinks he's adorable, wants to wrap his arms around him and nibble on his ear, but does not. Things are still tense.

Seamus is grinning madly when he shows Harry the finished product; somehow he's managed to inscribe "Welcome, Baby Rosie" in mashed potatoes on the top. He seizes Harry by the ear and kisses him roughly, joyously, spontaneously. "You're an uncle now!" he exclaims illogically, resolutely ignoring the momentous kiss.

Harry's stomach does flips for hours.

**12. Substitution**

Harry tells himself he's only sticking with Seamus because he's what Harry's got right now. Not all he's got, but one of the bigger things, definitely. He intends to keep sticking around.

Still, a man's got needs.

Harry declines the offer of a blowjob in the club's grimy bathroom and risks bringing the boy home instead.

No luck; Seamus is still awake. He rages and throws the boy out by the collar; he seizes Harry's collar too, eyes flashing and fist raised. Harry's heart migrates to his throat, but in the end he storms out, slamming the door behind him.

**13. Isolation**

Facts:

The flat is unnaturally quiet without Seamus in it.

Coming home to not-Seamus is jarring no matter how many times it happens.

Dishes pile up really fast when one doesn't wash them.

Dishes start smelling weird after lying around dirty for six days.

Cleaning the flat top-to-bottom is a really great way to distract oneself for an entire Saturday, but a flat feels even emptier clean than dirty.

Harry wants Seamus to come back.

But Harry cannot get Seamus to come back without admitting some kind of mistake on his part.

And Harry did not make any mistakes, goddammit.

**14. Breakdown**

Harry goes to Ginny because he isn't in the mood to be judged.

"Exactly what is there between you and Seamus?" Ginny asks.

"Would I be here if I knew?"

"Hm." She considers. "Is it... physical?"

"No! Hardly. Not on purpose."

She hums again. "But he's jealous. And you miss him."

Harry shrugs.

"Honestly Harry, you're making this harder than it is."

"No, you're making this harder than it is by not helping." Harry crosses his arms over his chest. "If I wanted all this judgmental shit I'd've gone to Hermione."

"I'm not judging!" Ginny protests, though Harry knows better.

**15. Extremity**

After waiting one more day, just in case (Seamus could return at any moment; Harry doesn't want to look the idiot), Harry sits down with Hedwig and a blank piece of parchment. His growing worry that Seamus is lying comatose in some gutter somewhere saves him from pushing it back another day (just in case), but does not help him think of what to say. What he wants to say is difficult enough to work out; what Seamus might want to hear is unfathomable.

Brevity wins out:

Come back? We should talk.

Who knows, talking could be easier than writing.

**16. Return**

Talking is not easier than writing, so they don't do it. Seamus comes home late on the night Harry has sent the third owl, probably hoping that Harry will be asleep and they'll both wake up and never have to admit the past week happened.

But Harry is awake reading when Seamus walks in, and then he is not reading, he is plastered against the wall. And Seamus is mauling him. And not with his fists – with his fucking amazing mouth, his thigh between Harry's legs and his hands and oh fucking merlin shit fuck this is fucking good.

**17. Bliss**  
They wake up together in a cramped tangle on the couch. The clothes they were wearing last night are sticky and mostly undone anyway, so they peel them off and do last night again, except naked, and more horizontal. It's even more brilliant.

Eventually a shower sounds attractive, so they take one (together, because there's only so much hot water to go around), and nearly need another one after they've finished toweling each other off.

Breakfast – or lunch, as the case may be – is made while half-naked, giggling and stealing kisses and saying nothing at all of consequence.

**18. Dinner**

The dining room table at the Burrow is large, and Harry sits as far away from Seamus as possible. Already risky coming here, it is imperative they give no reason for suspicion.

The table means Harry can't touch Seamus, but he can't stop looking at him, and soon Ron notices.

"Hey, you and Seamus aren't... seeing each other, right?"

Harry darts a panicked glance across the table – if Seamus heard, this whole brilliant whatever-it-is they have going is ruined already.

Seamus meets his eyes briefly. He looks just as scared.

"Please, Ron." Harry allows derision to mask his nerves.

**19. Ambivalence**

The second they get back home, Seamus pins Harry against the door and snogs him breathless, which gives Harry the crazy idea that maybe talking about this a tiny bit isn't going to hurt anything.

"Did it bother you, what Ron said?" he asks tentatively, then adds, "Because I could tell him to stop."

Seamus shrugs. "People'll think what they like."

Harry desperately wants to ask whether people are right to think what they do, but feels he's gone far enough for one conversation.

Instead he tackles Seamus onto the couch, cheek on his chest, and turns on the telly.

**20. Stability**

"Seamus, can I ask you something?" Harry is still a bit scared of making everything fall to pieces, but right now he'd rather have a stable anything.

"Sure," Seamus says.

"Are you my boyfriend?"

Seamus freezes, and so does Harry. Fuck, he thinks, fuckfuckfuck.

Silence reigns. Seamus stares over Harry's shoulder, gnaws on his lip, rolls his eyes up, scratches his stubble, lets out a heavy breath. Chews his lip again. Finally he meets Harry's eyes. "Yeah," he says quietly. Then more firmly, "Yeah. Yeah, 'course I'm your boyfriend." His face splits into a dazzling grin.

"Me too," Harry says.

**21. Beginnings again**

Then they don't say anything; the moment stretches so long it feels like it will pull both of them apart.

Say something, Harry tells himself. But he can't; anything that would diffuse the massive tension of this moment would also undo the understanding that was just reached, bury it under bravado and the safely superficial.

A thought floats to the surface: if he is Seamus's boyfriend and Seamus his, it means he can ask for things. Boyfriend things. The freedom is exhilarating.

"Can I suck you off?" he asks, suddenly craving it.

Seamus nods. "If I can suck you too."

**22. Curve**

Harry keeps getting distracted by the way Seamus looks, warm skin bathed in buttery afternoon light and lips bruise-red and moist.

Seamus lowers his head to Harry's cock and it's pure bliss, the most honest thing Harry's felt in ages, forever maybe, and he forgets to breathe for long moments.

Curled around each other in the middle of Seamus's bed, they make a loose circle held together at its most fragile points. Harry strokes Seamus, tastes him for the first time and pulls him inside, lapping and swallowing and trying to make this somewhere he'll never want to leave.

It's hard to tell, now, where Harry begins and Seamus ends; everything is velvet heat and hard need and golden pleasure and Harry is lost, so lost.

They come undone one after another, swallowing and sputtering and cursing and blinking at the daylight; then Harry surges into Seamus's waiting arms and clutches him tight.

Seamus kisses his forehead. "'m so glad I got you in the end," he says, leaving the part about mates and might-have-beens unsaid, which is okay because Harry's already thinking it.

"We're right selfish bastards, aren't we?" Harry muses.

Seamus chuckles. "And that's a problem? We're us."

* * *

Feedback for the rare pair? I'll love you forever. 3


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